
Australian firefighters are desperately trying to stop a cluster of fast-moving blazes in southeastern Australia on Tuesday as thousands of acres of two national parks burned, and a farming community was forced to evacuate.
Australian firefighters are desperately trying to stop a cluster of fast-moving blazes in southeastern Australia on Tuesday as thousands of acres of two national parks burned, and a farming community was forced to evacuate.
Australian firefighters are desperately trying to stop a cluster of fast-moving blazes in southeastern Australia on Tuesday as thousands of acres of two national parks burned, and a farming community was forced to evacuate. Several fires were ignited in the Grampians National Park, a forested mountain range about 300 kilometers (186 miles) west of Victoria's state capital Melbourne. A separate fire in Little Desert National Park in the west of the state has torn through almost 65,000 hectares (160,000 acres) in less than 24 hours, emergency services said. That fire had forced the evacuation of rural Dimboola before threat levels were downgraded on Tuesday afternoon."Right now, firefighters are planning to do everything in their powers to protect communities," he said. Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Kevin Parkyn said stifling heat wave conditions would settle over parts of Victoria on Saturday, escalating fire risks. Once we get into the weekend, don't be surprised if we see heat wave conditions unfold across the state and continue to intensify into next week, he added. The landscape is dry, and if we continue to see these hot conditions, it will continue to dry the landscape out further.Hotter temperatures are fueling increasingly severe natural disasters across Australia, researchers have found. Scientists have documented a marked increase in extreme fire weather across the country since the 1950s. The unprecedented Black Summer bushfires of 2019 and 2020 killed 33 people and millions of animals, razed vast tracts of forest and blanketed major cities in thick smoke.